BabylonJS Content Competition - £750 prize

The VR Hive has launched a competition targeting mental health using immersive tech.

The Brief

Participants are invited to submit an immersive digital product that addresses mental health, including anxiety, ADHD, eating disorder, therapeutic resources and more. Participants are encouraged to think outside the box and submit innovative products for a demographic/age group and mental health challenge of their choice. The competition is supported by the National Health Service, University of the West of Scotland, Near-Life and the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre.

750 GBP prize up for grabs!

Competition opens: 14 February 2023 | Deadline for submissions: 10 March 2023 12 noon UTC/UK Time

Submissions must be made in Babylon.js

More info: https://www.thevrhive.com/competition

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w000t I love the idea !!! and the topic !!! I hope you ll get traction and that a lot of the community we ll participate !!!

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I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough to participate in this yet but I wish everyone who enters good luck!

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Thank you, @sebavan & @wavetro, we hope we get some good traction and submissions too!

@PirateJC we should promote it on our twitter (and linkedin ;))

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Does the submission have to be a VR experience or would a browser experience be sufficient?

Hi thanks for your question!

Obviously, as a VR company, we are really pushing for submissions to be made/suitable for VR. We would consider submissions that don’t have VR enabled but we would also be looking at how could we build upon the submission to make it a VR experience!

We will be targeting Desktop & Mobile devices as well as VR but we are trying to offer a similar experience for each piece of content we offer regardless of which device you are accessing it from!

I hope this helps, thanks!

That would be greatly appreciated if you could! Thanks!

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Same for me. I’m afraid this requires a lot more than just skills to create an app. One would first need to understand about the health aspect and the solutions for treatment in real-life before entering the virtual.

However, I also think it’s great that 1) such idea and solutions are studied and considered 2) that devs and engs are (for once) questionned before the project is already scoped and on tracks (which sadly, is still rare in such cases).

But then I also think it’s sure nice to offer an incentive/compensation for submission (many companies don’t). Yet, on the other hand, an app of this kind is likely worth 50k+. So, how will it be after submission/selection? Will you offer the mandate or a position to the winner or simply soak-up the design thinking and do your own thing? Just wondering…. As I said, I will not (cannot) participate.

GL anyways. I believe your project and approach deserves to be mentionned.

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I have a feeling the theme/structure of the competition is meant to emulate more of a game jam, and that it doesn’t have to strictly follow the themes of mental health. Think of something like Anxiety Adventures and not a literal medical-grade simulation that’s worth 50k. You are totally right about the scope thing though

I might have misunderstood it. English is not my language but when I read this I understand that the idea is not to create a game but rather a base that can be turned into supporting treatment of a disease.

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Yes , normally if a company needs something like this they have to pay a developer the general average amount to get their product.

Unless, you make it a competition , offering a smidgen of the worth as prize money , have some small print in the T&C saying your work can be used by them for whatever they want…

and presto

Not only did you save 90% on development , you even got multiple apps built to choose from and only had to pay for one :wink:

BUT

you also not guaranteed on getting any submissions or the quality of submissions , they may not even be worth 750 haha. So the above scenario is not going to work out then.

With that in mind I think the 750 pays for a good outsourcing of concepts or ideas at most.

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Yes, this is basically what I was trying to say.
In 13 years working for my agency and 20 years before that working for another agency, I can count on my fingers the number of times we were paid for a submission. And the highest was 2k offered by the petrol industry, lol :grin: But then, as an agency making a submission, you also know how many other competitors and you have the guarantee that if you win it, you get the mandate (normally).

Again, I’m pretty sure this is supposed to just be a simple game jam where the projects are all small in scope and are only loosely required to represent an idea or concept about mental health. Game jams are really meant for beginner-to-intermediate developers that want to practice making something for a portfolio, and not just for the prize. The competition prompt would be a lot more strict if it was trying to cheap out on developing a complex app

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Well, all I can say after this reading is that altogether we might have just thrown a ball at @TheVRHive :wink: May be this will require a little bit more details and explanations (a brief) if it is to remain on tracks :thinking:

Edit: Just to make this clear, I did read the brief from the website

…“improve access and increase the amount of mental health resources available. …”

and this doesn’t look to me like a simple ‘game jam’ (but then again, I could be wrong).

i have a winning idea …

just have a phone visible in the app with tictok on the screen and a watch now button, then on the side have a bar showing your IQ. Each time you click the watch button , your IQ drops.

There i did it, addressed the biggest mental health awareness issue of the 21 century haha

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I am not sure if I should laugh or cry at this post :thinking:. If you ask me, the above mentionned ‘pseudo-social media’ is the source of a new mental disease in itself :shushing_face: (but then again, that’s my opinion only).

No offense, but the fact the 750 prize is only granted AFTER repo ownership has been transfered to VRHive is quite deceptive.

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Hey, thanks for your post here! As someone has already mentioned, this is more in the realms of a “game jam” submission as opposed to a completely fleshed out commercial product. I do agree that yes there has to be an understanding about the health aspects, solutions, etc., which will require some research. One of the best approaches for this is: What is already out there? Can it be repurposed and gamified (without infringing IP)? This is a tactic used by game dev students for projects and it helps with generating ideas at least!

I can’t comment on anything else at the moment unfortunately, I am a dev so IP and the legal stuff is beyond me. If there’s any feedback around that sort of thing we need to address we will!

Cheers!

– SHDev

Hey, thanks for your message.

Could you let us know why you find this deceptive and how would you suggest we convey this information to participants to avoid this in the future? I will forward your response to my colleague, we are trying to be as transparent as possible!

–SHDev